Solitary Burdens
by Flatkatsi
Summary: Jack is back home, but still has more battles to fight. Sequel to Dropped Burdens.


Solitary Burdens  
  
He lay motionless again, but this time by choice. He choose not to move his abused body, not to turn slightly, bend a leg, or lift a head. He choose to stay still because he had tried all of those things since he woke, and they had all ended, as his grandmother had warned him so often in those long ago times of conflict with his siblings, in tears.  
  
Tears weren't something he allowed himself these days. He had cried himself dry, quietly and privately, those short years ago, and he thought he had none left. The moisture on his cheeks when he had awoken and moved had startled him. He felt betrayed by his own body, rubbing his face hard against the soft cradling pillow hastily, least anyone catch his moment of weakness.  
  
The tears may have surprised him, but waking hadn't. He had been patient in that ditch, knowing his team would find him, and he had known just as certainly that he would be delivered safely home. That was how it always worked. Nor was he destined to end his life sucking down filthy water on some flea bite of a planet just because a farmer's donkey had been tired. The wrong place at the wrong time had taken on a whole new world of meaning when fate had tossed him bodily into the path of that wagon, but he fully intended to cheat fate once again.  
  
No. He was destined to die in battle. He knew that with a certainty that was almost verging on the mystical. How it would happen, he had no idea, but he knew it didn't involve donkeys, sweat and manure. Nothing quite so prosaic for Jack O'Neill. He wouldn't go out with a whimper, no way. He would go out with a cataclysmic bang.  
  
He drifted, the room about him wavering gently as if in a breeze. Dull green walls became the waves of the ocean and he sank down into the warm depths, letting the water cup his body and sooth it. He floated inches below the surface, the incessant mechanical cacophony surrounding him melting and morphing into the lapping of ripples against the hull of a boat.  
  
He had always liked boats. They moved him into memories of times when life was simpler, when his responsibilities were for himself alone, not for the lives of countless others. When the most important thing he had to worry about was the pride in bringing dinner home after a day of fishing, his grandfather's deep voice hugging around him, cosy in the warmth of family.  
  
Family was important. Losing a member of your family involved pain, but pain became overshadowed by the memory of love. He had finally learnt no one was ever really lost if they were truly family. They stayed locked within and safe from the movement of time. Sorrow became sadness and changed again into a dull loss, then the remembrances grew and changed the loss into something more bearable. Now he could look at photos with love.  
  
Softly, softly something dragged him back and replaced the waves with a Greek chorus of beeps and buzzes, prophesying doom and woe. The caress of the drugs became a sharp incessant pull, taking his high and plunging him down deep, almost too deep to be found. His breath became something to fight for, gasping and choking, pushing a cough past broken ribs and damaged lungs, setting fire to his back. The water of the ocean became filled with mud and blood, as hands held him, taking choice from him and nailing him down with needles and tubes until he was no longer himself, but just an object, undemanding, silent and still.  
  
The poison flowed through his veins, as if the planet still had hold of him. He burnt and froze, each fevered toss awakening the gashes in his flesh, the healing only just begun and now reversing. Long hours blended and merged, as his strength was sapped until finally his heart stuttered, sending the machines into paroxysms of light and sound worthy of a Fourth of July firework display.  
  
He was unaware of the controlled panic around him, too busy fighting his own battle. This wasn't the battle he would die in, and he had no intention of surrendering to this insidious enemy that had snuck up on him while he was dreaming of the ocean. His team had come for him and he wouldn't let them down, even though in this fight he was alone.  
  
The touch of a hand startled him. Grounded once more in the present, he heard the anxious voices and tried to concentrate, words forming and ebbing. From the cotton wool filling the space between his ears, he knew he was drugged up to the eyeballs, thankfully considering the continual twists of pain across his shoulders and down until they became one mass of hurt.  
  
The voice became one he recognised. It had done this so many times before, been there so often that he could not imagine ever being without it to pull him up. He grasp the lifeline it lowered and rose, opening weary eyes, feeling every one of his years. For a moment he despaired, the thought rising unbidden; "How much more of this could he take?" Then he saw his team around him and no longer questioned.  
  
You don't leave anyone behind.  
  
He wouldn't leave them either.  
  
Closing eyes watched as the doctor injected something into his IV and the agony diminished. The words soothed him and bid him sleep.  
  
"We have you, Colonel."  
  
He let himself rest.  
  
The End 


End file.
